


If I Go, I’m Going Shameless

by ferociousqueak



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29990655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferociousqueak/pseuds/ferociousqueak
Summary: Growing up on the streets with no family to speak of, Shepard has no concept of what "home" means.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	1. Let My Hunger Take Me There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [klynnvakarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klynnvakarian/gifts).



> Thank you, klynnvakarian for being so understanding. I hope this fic makes up, at least in part, for the great delay in getting it to you. Please enjoy!

Their house had been battleship gray, and that was about all Shepard remembered of it. The words weren’t even hers—she’d been too young to know what a battleship was. They’d been her mother’s. She remembered the way the corner of her mouth turned down when she said it. While her younger self might not have had the words to articulate it, she knew now as an adult how disappointment and regret could sour an expression—an embrace.

She’d never even had a chance to call that house a home. She had no memories of which floorboards creaked or which faucets leaked no matter how often they were tightened. She couldn’t even remember if they’d kept pictures on the walls.

Once, when she’d been rifling through an alley dumpster to find something to eat or to insulate her against the cutting Montreal winter, whichever came first, before the sun set, she’d come across an honest-to-goodness magazine—one with those slippery pages that smelled like sawdust and something else sharp. It’d been one of those magazines with pictures of pretty houses and advice on how to redecorate your sitting room this season and what kinds of food were must-haves for the holiday. All concepts beyond her ability to fathom.

There was one layout showing a house in a snowy forest. Stones set close together at the base to keep out the cold, and cords of dark wood linked together to build strong walls for the thick ivy to crawl up. Inside was more wood and a stone fireplace, where flames glowed warm and happy, blankets that looked soft as anything, strewn lazily across a sofa. She’d had to touch the page with her near frozen fingertips just to make sure it was a picture and not real life.

It baffled her that not a single person was anywhere to be seen. Did these homes just exist? Waiting for someone to live in them? To be warm and happy?

Though she shredded her improvised insulation to line her thin, worn-out clothes then continued her search for something to either sleep under or eat, she tore out that single page, careful not to rip the picture, then folded it and put it in her back pocket. It was something to think about.

That picture stayed with her for years. She tucked it into a rusted coffee can with other trinkets she kept under a loose floorboard in the Reds’ crash house. Worn, with white marks where it had been folded more times than she could count, it stuck with her either in her footlocker at Basic or hidden beneath her underarmor through her N7 training. On Elysium, she’d worried she’d get blood on it, and she did but only a little bit and only on the part where there was text, leaving the pictures themselves untouched.

It was there.

When Ashely stayed behind to make sure the bomb went off.

When _Sovereign_ reanimated Saren’s dead carcass in a last-ditch effort to stop her.

When the _Normandy_ listed above Alchera and her oxygen rapidly, unceasingly abandoned her.

It wasn’t there anymore when she awoke on Lazarus Station, but she didn’t realize that for at least a couple of hours.


	2. Let My Anger Take Me There

It was destroyed on the first _Normandy_ , just like she’d been. That page from the magazine, that picture, was the only personal item she’s looked for on Alchera—the dog tags were more an obligation, a reminder of those she'd failed and needed to find a way to honor—and only charred, frozen ashes remained. The fragile chards crumbled to the touch and melted into the heated glove protecting her hand. It had probably been a stupid dream anyway. She’d never gotten to have that home before she died the first time. Why should she even entertain the idea she’d get to see it before she died for good?

Back on the new _Normandy_ , she deposited the blackened, useless helmet she’d found unceremoniously into the trash compactor and took the elevator up to her cabin without saying a word to anyone, beyond instructing EDI to have Joker set a course for the next destination on her to-do list. If she remembered correctly, they’d be in orbit around Tuchanka in the next day or so to figure out what was bothering Grunt. Good. She’d get her crew member set to right—Shepard might’ve gained a reputation for being crazy, and for good reason, but even she didn’t want an unpredictably out of sorts krogan loose on her ship—and she’d have no shortage of things to shoot.

Back in her room, she placed the dog tags gently into the drawer of her nightstand and pulled out her running clothes. As she did laps around the cargo bay, her feet hitting hard against the cold gray metal and sweat dripping down her back, Shepard couldn’t help but feel as if the last little bit of her had burned up along with that thin, tattered scrap of old paper.

She’d run _from_ so much in her life—the cops, slavers, pirates, geth. But that little home and its stupid stone fireplace had been the only thing she’d ever wanted to run _toward_. Sure, she’d launched herself at countless enemies. Anderson, Hackett, the Council, and now the Illusive Man could point at a problem, tell her to go, and she’d go, leaving a trail of fire in her wake. But those had been orders. They hadn’t been her own direction. Did she even know what her own direction was anymore? Or did she just take the first set of orders submitted to her like . . . like some kind of high-tech, computer program?

A sharp pain jolted her from her thoughts, and Shepard fell forward onto the palms of her hands.

“Dammit!” she growled through gritted teeth and hit the side of her fist against the deck.

“Commander Shepard,” EDI’s voice came over the cargo bay speakers, “you appear to be injured. Would you like me to inform Dr. Chakwas?”

“No!” Shepard snapped. She took a deep breath and tried again. “No, EDI. Thank you. It’s just a rolled ankle. I can get there myself.”

Gingerly, Shepard pushed herself to her feet and hobbled to the elevator. It was a stupid injury, and she was stupid for letting her attention slip like that.

As the elevator doors closed, she put her arm up against the wall and closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing to take her attention away from the throbbing in her ankle. Jesus, this was annoying. After a moment, when the initial pain began to ebb, she opened her eyes and started at the faint orange glow in front of her. When she took a step back to get a better look, the glow faded. She put her fingers to the hot scars crisscrossing her cheek and jaw and frowned. The brushed metal of the wall wasn’t exactly reflective, but the cybernetics peeking through Shepard’s not-yet-healed skin, though dim, were bright enough to catch a shine. Bright enough to keep her awake at night.

The doors opened and she snapped her attention back to the task at hand. The throbbing in her ankle had already begun to abate, but she knew if word got back to Chakwas that Shepard didn’t at least let her look at the damage done, Chakwas would come after her with that I’m-not-angry-just-disappointed look she could get when Shepard tried to avoid checkups.

She lifted her hand instinctually to shield her eyes from the bright, sanitized light of med bay. It was a gesture that had already become routine, even in the short time she’d been aboard this bigger, fancier, faker version of the _Normandy_ that still creaked as it settled into its own size. At least the two faces in front of her were a welcome sight, even if one had been badly mangled.

“Kicking pyjacks again?” The playful lilt in Garrus’s voice drew a short huff from Shepard.

“That was one time,” she said, limping toward Chakwas, who was already _tsk_ ’ing at her. “Damn thing wouldn’t give me the disk back.”

“Right,” he drawled. “As I recall, you’d already gotten it back.”

“Little shit had it coming.” She let Chakwas guide her to the bed adjacent to Garrus’s—the side without the scars—then gently pulled off the shoe on the affected foot, wincing.

“I’ll get to you in a moment, Commander,” Chakwas said, the coolness in her voice clearly affected. “I prefer to treat my patients based on the wisdom of their injuries so that they can think about what they’ve done.”

Shepard sneered playfully. “Taking a rocket to the face is a ‘wiser’ injury than rolling your ankle during a routine run?”

Garrus chuckled, but it wasn’t lost on Shepard the way he turned his head slightly away from her. Chakwas shot her a quick, sharp glance then returned her attention to tenderly removing the bandage from the still fresh wound on Garrus’s face. Shepard deserved that look.

“Do yours glow too?” she asked, an apology and an olive branch.

He shrugged. “A little. Doc says that’ll go away when it’s all patched up.”

Chakwas nodded and hummed without looking up from her work. “Yours will too, Commander. Just give it time.”

Shepard drew a thumb along the longest line and gave a wry smile. “I think they give me character. Though, we’re going to Tuchanka next, so it might be best to keep my helmet on after we land. Don’t want the locals to go falling in love with me.”

“Probably a good idea regardless,” Garrus said, flicking half a grin. “You never know which building might fall on you.”

Chakwas pulled off her gloves, indicating she’d finished redressing his mandible, and moved her attention to Shepard. A cursory investigation of the wound, some light pressure on the tender area, and she released her with a shake of her head.

“Not the worst I’ve seen from you, Commander,” she said as she headed to her medicine cabinets, pulling out a roll of bandage tape. Returning to Shepard, she took up her foot again and began to wrap it. “When you leave here, go to you cabin and keep it elevated, preferably at or above your heart level. I’ll give you an icepack so you can ice it for fifteen to twenty minutes every two hours. Stay off your feet until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Shepard groaned. “Cerberus brought me back with all that fancy tech and a bad step can still take me down for a whole day?”

Chakwas kept her eyes on her work as if she were performing brain surgery, but Shepard could still see the way her lips pressed into a thin line. “Your body . . . and the tech helping it . . . are doing their best, Commander. You should try to let them.”

Clipping the bandage into place, Chakwas glanced up to give Shepard a look that was somewhere between admonishing and pleading. For a moment, the image of a mother kissing her child’s skinned knee to make it feel better flitted through Shepard’s mind and it made her throat feel funny. She hopped down from the table and started her one-and-a-half-footed hobble toward the door.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, clenching her teeth through the annoyance of the ache. “The nano weave will take care of it.”

Despite Chakwas’s calls, Shepard let the door shut behind her without response. She didn’t even know why she’d come to med bay. She’d been through worse—she’d been through death. What was a sk- what was a rolled ankle compared to that? No one ever caught her falls before, and there was no reason for them to start now.

#

Predictably, a soft tapping at her door came some time later—how long, she couldn’t and didn’t really care to tell, but she'd known it was only a matter of time before Chakwas would send an emissary. Shepard sat at her desk, leaning back with her throbbing foot up, a datapad resting against her raised thigh. She glanced at the console screen looming above her and shook her head.

“Let him in, EDI,” she said and returned her eyes to the ‘pad in her lap. The door hissed open, but there was no sound of movement. “You just gonna stand there, Big Guy?”

It only took a few tentative steps for Garrus to appear around the corner, holding up the ice pack and pain killers Chakwas had sent him to deliver.

Shepard flicked her gaze up and nodded her head toward the fish tank. “You can just toss those in there.”

Garrus glanced in the direction of her indication and shook his head. “Pretty sure this stuff isn’t healthy to feed your fish.”

She shrugged one shoulder but still kept her eyes on the ‘pad in front of her. “Doesn’t matter. They’re dead.”

Instead of obeying Shepard’s direct order, Garrus crossed his arms, the supplies still in his grip, and shifted his weight to an easier stance. “What are you doing?”

Shepard scrolled up the page and said flatly, “Research.”

He sauntered beside her to get a better look, “Something for the main battery I hope? Not that I have a stake in it or anything.”

Shepard turned off the screen and tossed the ‘pad aside, letting it clatter across the desk. “Not that kind of research.”

Swinging her leg to the ground, she stood abruptly and brushed past Garrus toward the stairs. She didn’t make it a full step toward the stairs before she nearly collapsed in pain, momentarily forgetting she couldn’t put her full weight on her foot just yet. The only thing that kept her up was an arm that suddenly appeared around her waist.

Wordlessly, Garrus helped her down the stairs and set her gently on the sofa, it being nearer than the foot of the bed. Tossing the ice pack and pain killers onto the coffee table, he instead turned his attention to the pillows on the bed and grabbed as many as he could.

“Where’s your heart,” he asked as he made his way back to Shepard, that mission-focus look on his face.

“Garrus, I don’t—”

“Your heart,” he said, the hard tone in his voice at odds with his strangely soft, unwavering stare.

Shepard sighed and slumped into the sofa, pointing at her chest. “Here. As long as Cerberus didn’t ‘improve’ that too.”

Garrus paused, his mandibles fluttering in confusion. “How do you, uh . . .”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m not going to put my foot above my head. Just give me one of those.” This order he obeyed, and Shepard placed it against the back of the sofa, sliding herself into position. “The other one.”

Swinging her leg around, she positioned the new pillow under her foot and reclined against the first. She grimaced and closed her eyes. The sofa shifted under another, heavier weight, and Garrus lifted her leg along with the pillow onto his lap.

She leaned up, propped on her elbows and glared. “Garrus, you don’t—”

“Shut up, Shepard.” Despite the teasing notes, Shepard bristled at the refusal.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Shut up?”

His mandibles flicked in a grin. “You’re right, I apologize. Shut up, _ma’am_.”

Shepard held him in an angry stare, doing her level best not to let his wry, familiar humor melt the icy mood she’d been nursing.

He raised her leg higher. “Chakwas said your foot should be above your heart—”

“ _At_ or above,” she corrected him, rising to rest on her palms.

“Have it your way, Commander.” He raised her leg again in response, her hamstrings starting to burn. “If you want your crew to take care of _them_ selves, you have to take of _your_ self. We follow your example, Shepard.”

She swung her good foot to the ground to stand, and he rose with her. Between her own imbalance and the sudden movement, Shepard hopped several times trying to right herself—and regain some dignity—but it wasn’t enough. She teetered and began to topple.

Garrus’s hand caught her, pulling her up and steadying her again. “I can do this all night, Commander. Can you?”

She clenched and unclenched her jaw in a bright moment of fury, and then relented. Loosening her grip on his hand, she let him help her back to the sofa. “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that, Vakarian?”

He chuckled softly as he returned her foot to the pillow on his lap and reached for the ice pack. “I’ve heard a few humans call me that. Usually while I was arresting them because they were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing.”

She ignored the pointed tone he cleared directed at her.

Cracking the ice pack, he wrapped it around her ankle and held it there. Goosebumps ran from her legs to her shoulders as Shepard felt the pack speed from room temperature to ice cold in seconds. The weight on the cushions shifted again as Garrus reached for the blanket tossed haphazardly across the back of the sofa.

“I’m not cold,” Shepard protested as he used one hand to hold the ice pack in place and the other to throw the cover across her.

“I may be a bad turian, Shepard,” he said, the humor still resonant, “but not even I’m about to tell my commanding officer to shut up a second time.”

She huffed a laugh and adjusted the blanket. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“Shut up and take these,” he said, his voice thrumming with warmth as he tossed the bubble pack of pain killers to her.

She pushed the pills through the weak side, cupped and tossed them back. “See?”

A comfortable silence fell between them—probably just the blanket, or the pain killers—and Shepard felt her muscles ease and loosen more than they had since before . . . well, since before.

“So porn then?” Garrus said, his mandibles in a teasing tilt. “Your ‘research’?”

Shepard laughed quietly and rolled her eyes. “I swear to Christ, Vakarian, if you start doing those stupid air quotes, I’ll throw you out the air lock myself.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Not that kind of research. It was . . . just some Earth stuff. Stupid stuff, really.”

He hummed. “Looking for your family?”

Shepard swallowed and shook her head once. “Nope. Don’t have any. None that matter anyway. I don’t even think about them anymore. What about you? Your family doing okay?”

His mandibles fluttered and he kept his eyes on the hand holding the ice pack wrapped around her ankle. “Talked to my dad. Just before we met up on Omega, actually. Heard from my sister too.”

Even for someone as unfamiliar with how families worked as she was, Shepard could see the gaping holes in his answer. Plenty of psych evals had described her as brash, direct, aloof, unable or unwilling to recognize others’ feelings, but that wasn’t entirely true. She let that subject drop.

After another long silence, she took a deep breath and said, “I was looking for a magazine. An old one. From when I was a kid. One of the ones with this high-quality paper. Pretty sure they’re out of print now. I don’t remember the name, though, so that doesn’t really help when you’re looking through archives of defunct publishers. I think it was something French, but French and English blur together when I think about those days sometimes.”

Garrus tilted his head at her, listening closely. “What’s special about this magazine?”

Shepard shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. I . . . there’s this picture I found once, and I wanted . . . it had this . . .” The blood rushed in her ears, as if she were performing open-heart surgery on herself. She tried again. “It burned up when the _Normandy_ went down.”

His brow plates drew down in confusion. “I thought you said this was from when you were a kid.”

She nodded. “It was.”

Garrus hummed and nodded but didn’t pry further.

A soft beep sounded from his omni-tool, and Garrus removed the ice pack, tossing it again to the coffee table.

“That’s fifteen minutes,” he said. “How’s it feel?”

Shepard moved her foot around, testing for pain as much as for range of motion, but couldn’t feel much of anything at all. “Numb.”

Garrus nodded. “That sounds about right. Probably best to keep off it just the same. You can do a lot of damage to yourself when you don’t feel anything.” He paused, his mandibles trembling. “I can go now if you want me to.”

His voice was flat, but there was a question there. Shepard didn’t know how to answer it, not yet.

“Nah, you can stay,” she said. “The pain killers are kicking in, which means I’m about to get snacky and want to watch vids. You in?”

His mandibles fluttered in a smile. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

Shepard rolled her eyes. “Now he’s a good turian.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Standing, Garrus set her foot and pillow down again. “I’ll get some grub. You pick the vid.”


	3. Let My Darling Take Me There

Shepard wasn’t sure when the SR-2 had become such a welcome sight. When had the sheen of that hull brought a happy heat to her heart? When had the traffic of the corridors begun to match the pulse in her veins? When had the lights turned warm enough to calm her worries?

Maybe it was the moment Joker leaned out the airlock and broken his own bones providing covering fire against the Collectors to give her enough space to run. Or maybe when she’d jumped, never once doubting someone would catch her.

Maybe it was when Project Rho hurtled across the Bahak system, a countdown clock literally ticking above her, telling her exactly when it would strike Aratoht and kill hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting batarians. When the SR-2 approached from behind the looming, ominous hologram of Harbinger, there to deliver her from her own grim death, even when her crew had no reason to know where she was or whether she was in trouble.

Then again, it might have been the _Normandy_ ’s sudden appearance in Vancouver as Reaper soldiers had pinned her and Anderson down and she’d exhausted her ammunition at the ever-advancing, Reaper-corrupted batarians, the warm light of Sol gleaming from her curves, Kaidan offering her a hand and welcoming her back—welcoming her home.

_Home._

Two arms circled her waist and her own hand reached up to caress the rough mandible coming down to rest on her shoulder.

“Nightmares?” Garrus asked, his voice low, a comforting note rumbling in his subvocals.

Shepard shrugged in response but didn’t offer more explanation. There really wasn’t much point in describing the same dream over and over.

He nuzzled closer to her neck and let her keep her silence until she was ready to say more. The brightly colored fish swam lazily in front of them, as if space were the most natural place for them to spend their lives. What would happen if they were suddenly transported to their natural environments? Fresh water. Salt water. Eezo-rich water. Lightly irradiated water. Would they be happier? Or had they been gone too long? Had this unlikely aquarium leaping from one mass relay to the next become more home to them than wherever nature and evolution had brought up those who came before them?

At length, Shepard broke the silence, “Somewhere tropical.”

She felt his mandibles twitch in confusion before he settled again, catching the thread of her thoughts. “That’s what famous people do, right? Especially, war heroes. Happens all the time.”

“Describe it to me.”

He hummed pleasantly against her, and she closed her eyes to imagine every detail.

“Nothing prefabricated,” he started. “I think that’s a given. It’s warm enough not to need too many walls, but there’s a breeze to keep it comfortable. There’s a gentle rain every afternoon to keep things cool, but it never storms. And there’s no one around for miles, so pesky clothes are completely unnecessary.”

Shepard chuckled at that image, but the brief lightness palled again. “Do you think there’s any place like that still? Even with the Reapers?”

She felt him shrug. “If there’s not, we’ll get it back.”

Shepard took a deep breath and turned in Garrus’s arms, wrapping her own around his neck as she lifted on her toes to kiss him. They both knew their chances were slight, but they had an unspoken agreement not to acknowledge it. What good would it have done? Home was more of a distant wish than a reality. Like Santa Claus or the Wizard of Oz. Pulling back the curtain, even if you already knew what you’d find, was too devastating. And their devastation punch card was nearly fully punched—they had to be careful about the next trauma to experience before fate threw a free one in the mix.

When the kiss ended, Garrus rested his brow against hers and said, “Somewhere with snow.”

Shepard smiled, swallowing the sob rising in her throat.

“There’s a fireplace,” she assured him.

#

Everything hurt.

A hot wind carrying the acrid scent of sulfur and burned flesh whipped across Shepard’s face, cooling the hot streams of blood—not hers—running down her neck and beneath her undersuit as she carried Garrus back to the _Normandy_ ’s open, waiting hull. Despite one blast after another sending shockwaves that threatened to level them once and for all, the _Normandy_ stood fast, if visibly trembling from mortar fire raining down around them.

Every muscle protesting, Shepard unfurled Garrus's arm from around her shoulder and handed him off to Vega. “Take him.” The dry rasp in her voice was obvious even to her and she swallowed, to no avail. “Get out of here.”

Garrus pulled weakly away from Vega but not far. “You’ve gotta be kidding.” A rivulet of blood dripped steadily from his right mandible, but he didn’t seem to notice, only furrowed his brow plates tighter and tried to pull toward her again. “We’re in this till the end.”

It had taken some time, but Shepard had been able to pick up on some of the subtler meanings in turian subvocals. Anger. Distress. Disbelief. Pleading. They were all there in a rich tapestry that said, _Let me go with you_.

It only took a few short steps to reach him, but they were the longest of her life—walking toward goodbye. She reached up, wiping away the blood and grime from his scars—their geography she’d learned by heart—and held his gaze with her own. Proclamations of love felt paltry as fire and death raged around them, but still she held him there.

_You have to stay._

Stepping away, her fingertips lingering as long as they could reach him, she gave the signal to Vega and the crew to take off, to fall back, to let her finish what they'd come there to do. The command itself felt hollow, as if someone else gave it. And perhaps someone had. She had no clue how she’d summoned the strength to say it herself.

As she ran toward the bright light of the beacon—as she ran away from Garrus, from home—she felt inexplicably lighter. The _Normandy_ would keep him, would carry him to safety.

All that was left for her to do was run.


	4. Epilogue

Shepard whirled under the red light of the dance floor, sliding in and out of Garrus’s hold while never fully leaving his touch. The beat of the music matched the beat of her heart, the warmth of his arms, his hands leaving a thrilling trail wherever his skin met hers. For eyes as blue as his, the heat behind them sent frissons down her spine. Her face hurt, so unused she was to the smile that had taken up residence there.

Slowly, the edges of her vision began to cloud. Garrus began to fade, though his heat remained. A thin smoke curled between them, and the air became harder and harder to bring into her lungs. Her bones ached and her muscles burned. The smile had vanished but her face still hurt.

But the beat and the warmth continued.

Gasping, Shepard opened her eyes, regretting it instantly. Blinking against the bright, white light bearing down on her, she took several labored breaths and tried to sit up but her body refused to obey any of the orders she gave it. A gentle beeping persisted somewhere near, and with great effort, she turned her head to see a black screen with jagged green lines running across it.

She also saw the crest of a sleeping turian resting against the rough blanket covering her hospital bed, her one hand clasped in both of his.

Closing her eyes again, her muscles unwinding, Shepard let out a long breath.

_I am home._


End file.
